I got back from my holiday yesterday evening. I neglected to take pictures, foolishly.

It was a really great holiday. It was fantastic to taste some top wines, enjoy some great food and see my friends when I am actually properly happy. Being happy makes one hell of a difference to how one can enjoy a holiday.

Tomorrow morning I am off on holiday for 12 days. I will not have a regular (or affordable) internet connection so updates, and hopefully pictures, will come on my return.

At the end of last week I was in Venice. It is an incredible place.

The architecture shows you are really abroad, I haven't been to a place like it. With its warren-like mass of little passages it must be a wonderful place to grown up in. OK, it is a bit dilapidated, but it was completely beautiful.

Once you get out on the main tourist areas you can have top food at reasonable prices, and not be fleeced for drinks. It is more peaceful in these areas, and dining by a canal on a lovely day in mid-October is a great pleasure.

Saint Mark's cathedral was amazing, and there are other deeply compelling churches to visit even if you are a confirmed atheist like me.

There is a lot of tourist tat around, like all of the crap glassware on display in every-other shop, but a lot of fun can be had there. It is clearly worth going off season, the weather was still great in October, and there was less of a mass of tourists. A top destination; I shall return.

I've spent the last ten days in Burgundy, Alsace and Champagne; three of my top four favourite wine regions. I had a lot of fun, tried some excellent wines and had some great food. I did feel a tad 'on display' which began to grind me down by the end of the holiday, but large it was a good trip. No pictures, alas.

I met my Community Psychiatric Nurse today, he took me to Oxleas Wood. I had no idea it existed, it is a really nice piece of greenery in South-East London. I have to admit to not really feeling up to it. Another night of no sleep last night, my body is shrieking with pain and my mind is a real mess. I walked around holding Butter the bear in his bag staring at the ground. I didn't want to look up as there were lots of people about screaming abuse at me. Of course, there were not really, but I could see and hear them, and that makes dealing with going out very difficult.

I'm off to Oxford tomorrow to meet up with an old friend for lunch and get some wine from my cellar. I hope I am in better form, and in less pain. Hauling a bastard load of wine back on the train will be difficult if my back is hurting this much. I am getting some magnums for my birthday celebrations in November. Some friends have said they will make the trek into Town for a mass booze-up. It'll be good to have some wine in the flat, at the moment I am completely bereft of things to drink.

I spent the weekend in France, we went to two good restaurants and one bloody awful one. Here is me moping in the dreadful restaurant:

Overall it was a fun weekend. However, I have come back to find myself in the depths of insomnia. It is bloody awful. I am supposedly on the waiting list for Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for insomnia. Who knows when that will happen. Moreover, there is a big chance they won't do it until I have completed a course of CBT for psychosis and that, of course, is even further away.

Hello from Finland; we have come here to visit the partner's dieing dad. Not terribly jolly, I admit, but these things have to be done. Poor chap is in a bad old state, he is feeling so rotten he is sleeping most of the time. He discovered he was riddled with cancer when a tumor on his lungs got so big it cracked a rib. Nasty way to go.

Finland itself is a cold dump. We were extremely fortunate to have a decent meal last night as the culinary scene in Helsinki is non-existent. Tonight's dinner of steak and chips included the worst steak I have ever eaten and the second worst chips (the worst being at the hamburger chain Quick in France). Really depressing stuff, all in all.

I look forward to coming home tomorrow. I miss the little cat. Many thanks to the neighbours for looking after him.

It was my birthday on Thursday and to celebrate that, and what the neighbours referred to as me surviving being iller than they've seen me in years, we spent a long weekend in Amsterdam. No, we didn't do anything cultural, just smoked a lot and ate croquettes. It was a lot of fun, and I am terribly grateful to the neighbours for being there.

I am back in Estonia after spending the weekend in Helsinki. People were commenting how good the weather was for the time of year whilst I found seven Celcius to be a tad on the chilly side.

I had a truly excellent bottle of wine in a Japanese restaurant that had perhaps the worst fish I have ever eaten. It was dreadful. If you are ever visiting Helsinki I can highly recommend Hotel Glo, but just avoid the sushi joint next-door. The cynic in me says avoid most of the restaurants, as I have rarely eaten well in Finland. What can you expect from a country where they love meat donuts?

I'll be here until Wednesday, then it is back to civilisation and my little cat.

I am in Tallinn at the moment. Most of the city that I have walked through looks like Communist-era concrete monstrosities, but the old town is reasonably pretty. I wouldn't come here if you are expecting decent food or drink; all of the beer I have had here has been foul and the food isn't much better. It is pretty cold, the warming power of my tweed jacket has been greatly appreciated.

I am off to Finland tonight for the weekend, then it'll be two more days in Estonia. I have to say I'll be pleased to get home, I miss my little cat.

I spent the weekend in France with the neighbours. The point was to go and visit three very good restaurants. At the first I ate this sausage:

The owner of the restaurant made suggestive comments as I toyed with the enormous sausage.

Things are still not entirely brilliant as far as mental health goes, but they have been a lot worse. I am generally holding off from lacerating my arms and only randomly cry a few times a day. The hallucinations are still pretty bad, but I am finally having my anti-psychotic medication changed to something useful on Monday, so hopefully these will be less of a problem soon.

I have come back from France early as I am so depressed I need to go to the loony bin immediately. Bugger.

I'll get home, charge my phone and internet tablet then head straight there. They are expecting me. I wonder how long I'll have to wait for a bed this time. At my local bin my minimum waiting time has been twelve hours.

I am off on holiday tomorrow for a week. Earlier my mother visited to collect Kisu the cat, she is looking after him whilst I am away. Thoughtfully, she brought me a replacement Kisu:

Tomorrow at the crack of sparrow fart I am going on a jaunt. A few of us are going to Amsterdam for a long weekend. I've never been before. I am told there are some good buildings, a couple of reasonable museums and truly dreadful food. Bums. I hate truly dreadful food. If any anecdotes happen or, for a change, I manage to take interesting pictures I will post them on my return.

I'd just like to wish anyone who reads this a happy new year. New year is a good thing partly because it is an excuse to drink some Champagne, but also because all of my wines become one year older and so closer to drink-ability.

The past year has had some entertaining moments. Our trips to Burgundy and the Basque country were a lot of fun. Going to Sweden was also pretty good; another booze-fuelled holiday. I've had Butter the bear for two years now and much cuddling has taken place. There have been some great wines drunk, and they'll be a few more tonight. I survived the one serious attempt I made on my life and at the moment I am pleased I did survive.

Hopefully the new year will bring some excitement, new experiences and general jollity. I hope it goes well for all of you who read this.

My good friends the neighbours are off on holiday today for a month. I will miss them. Last year we had them over on boxing day and cooked an enormous chicken; the chicken was almost as good as the company. Shame we will not be able to do this again. I wish them bon voyage for their journey and look forward to seeing them both on their return.

I had to go to Oxford today. I took advantage of my time there to pick up some wine from my cellar. I have to say that lugging back eighteen bottles and two magnums was somewhat of a strain. This will provide me with good drinking over the next couple of months. I'll have the magnums around my birthday (next month) with friends.

Oxford is a great place to visit, very beautiful. May I suggest that should you find yourself there and after something to eat the Chiang Mai Kitchen, down one of the back passages off the High Street, is a great place to eat.

I'm back from just over a week in the Basque country; it was a lot of fun. The day we arrived it was thirty Celsius, which was pretty good for October. I took a few photos. We saw this incredibly camp advert for a boozer when going on a tapas crawl; I like his freshly waxed legs.

This is the dog made out of flowers that guards the entrance to the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao.

Here are a couple of images of the Guggenheim itself. It is a great building, shame it is largely filled with crap.

Finally here is a slow-grilled ox-chop from a great restaurant in Tolosa. It is where I have had the best beef in the world.

Tomorrow I go on holiday, so I hope you will forgive a lack of entries for a bit over a week.

Fluffy Bat, my security bat who is definitely a real bat rather than a Mothercare-brand cellular cotton cot blanket, has got rather filthy after months of soothing me in bed; it is time for a wash. This means I will not be embarrassed by how dirty he is when I take him on holiday at the end of the week.

We'll be going to the Basque country for our holiday, the North-East corner of Spain. This is a great place for eating and we have booked every meal in advance so we are sure of being able to go to the best places. We've been before and it is a real laugh. I must wear my floweriest shirts.

Let us hold hands and dance around the lilac toadstool of love!

More seriously: It was a great holiday, but I am pleased to be home. I tried some great wines, ate some nice food and larked about by swimming pools.

It was often 33C in Burgundy, which I thought was getting a bit too hot. The weather report for tomorrow tells me it'll be 36C here. Crivens. That is the weather for mooching about in front of the fan in just a nappy.

I'm off to Burgundy tomorrow, so there will be no entries for ten days unless I decide to fight with a French keyboard.

Burgundy should be a real laugh. I have two full days of tastings booked and there will be plenty of time for relaxing by the pool. If I take any good photographs I'll post them on my return.

Today I am being interviewed for a psychiatric journal. I will be explaining what it is like to live with schizophrenia. 'Very difficult' just about sums that up. At least this gives me an excuse to travel into central London and do a bit of shopping; there are a few things I need to get for my trip to France. Since I'll be visiting a lot of winemakers I should really get a notepad so I can write everything up. Given a bit of application I should be able to write an article or two about my trip.

It is less than a week until I go on my hilarious holiday to Burgundy. It promises to be a lot of fun. We will be visiting some great winemakers, I must take notes furiously. I'll also be taking my Ipod and PSP for entertainment when I am relaxing by the pool. Larks ahoy!

I've been attempting to organise which winemakers I'll see when I go to Burgundy. Two of my favourite replied today to say I can visit. Hooray! I love wine and visiting such great people will really slap a smile across my face. Visiting them means I'll have to wear something smarter than my nursery-printed overalls, but I don't mind if it means I'll get to freeload fine wine. I say freeload, but I buy wine from all of them so it all balances out.

I saw the doctor today and my dose of anti-psychotics has been increased. This should perk me up enough to be on form when I visit people.

I'm off to Burgundy in July. It is a brilliant place to visit if you like wine. I'll be staying with some winemaker friends, larking about by the pool in baby clothes during the morning, then going for tastings with other brilliant winemakers in the afternoon. I am already chortling with pleasure about this trip. The only fly in the ointment is that probably two out of the ten days there will have to be spent re-organising my cellar there. There was some rebuilding work in it and all the wines had to be moved. This was what it looked like when I last saw it:

Sadly my enormous double magnum of Pommard Clos des Epeneaux 1999 is out of shot, it is a brilliant bottle.

A bunch of us did go to Oxford on Saturday to play croquet. It was a lot of fun. This is where we played:

I did reasonably well considering I haven't played for three years. That didn't stop me from getting in a strop when I played a bad shot:

It is good being related to people in privileged positions. The boys and me were going to play croquet in the main quadrangle of a college in Oxford. Thanks to being related to a fellow (a lecturer who runs the place) of the college we will now be playing in the fellow's garden. This is great, we have a private garden for playing croquet, generally enjoying the summer and drinking.

The sun is warm, there is not a cloud in the sky and I've got an appointment at the weekend to play croquet for the first time in years; this is what I call summer.

Croquet is a brilliant game, you have to be obscenely nasty to your opponents in order to triumph. However, because this is done on a nice sunny day with plenty of drink being consumed all nastiness is performed with a smile on one's face.

The only fly in the ointment is that there will be five of us wishing to play and croquet is a game for 2-4 people. This probably means I will have to sit out the first games and limit myself to providing evil tactical advice for the less experienced players. To be honest, I haven't played in so long I am sure I'd be pretty hopeless, but it would still be fun.

I am sure the odd picture of our day out might make it here.

I am a London toddler, so am used to being in busy places. I found Stockholm to be a bit strange. Most of the time it looked very empty, as if half the population had been wiped out by some epidemic. It didn't really have the pulse of a big city, as London and New York do.

Also, I found it very difficult to tell which area I was in. Once you get out of the old city everywhere looks the same. There is no real differentiation between affluent or poorer areas. I'm glad I was with a native, otherwise I'd have spent all my time wondering around lost.

Tomorrow morning I am flying off to Sweden for a few days. I have the settings so my PDA can connect to the internet whilst I am there, but I doubt I'll do too much blogging until my return on Monday.

I hope it will be a bit warmer than on my last trip to Sweden.

I went on a day trip to France yesterday. The idea was to buy cheap Champagne and beer. The three of us travelling got quite a lot:

The prices in Calais are very keen so we have plenty of beer and Champagne to keep us going for a while.

Back from Whitstable, it was quite a fun little holiday. The Sportsman was a bit disappointing. Our table for two was one end of a large table filled with drinkers. This food wasn't great either; I can cook better shin of beef at home. The Oyster Fishery was a lot better; good ingredients cooked very well. I really enjoyed my monk fish with Parmesan. So now I am home. Off to the neighbours for dinner tonight.

The Sportsman was good, but hardly thrilling. Whereas I stuffed my face at the Oyster Fishery restaurant. Good ingredients cooked well, no bad thing.

I am in Whitstable. It is jolly cold.

I have booked a day trip to Whitstable between christmas and new year to deal with the booking in advance problem. I'll be going to The Sportsman and The Whitstable Oyster Fishery. Hopefully I'll be able to nosh of lots of oysters. They should be in the peak of condition in December. I might get some to bring home with me. I must remember to have some clean plastic pants so I don't get charged extra in the hotel.

I had planned to go to Whitstable today. It is a small fishing town on the Kent coast famous for its oysters. However, a quick ring around all of the restaurants there that I fancied going to demonstrated that one needs to book two weeks in advance. This demonstrates the sad lack of places to eat in nice locations around London; even the boozers were booked solid. Whitstable books up weeks in advance so one cannot just pop out for a day trip off the cuff and be promised a nice meal. I suppose it is good for the restaurants that they are in such demand, but I cannot always plan my days out two weeks in advance.

dasBlog and my server keep a track of where people come from in order to visit this spume of drivel; it appears that lots of livejournal users find People with AIDS plaza to be the funniest thing they have seen in a period of time. A worryingly large number of people are visiting the spume of drivel thanks to those people half-inching my picture. Not that I mind the picture being spread around in the slightest as I thought it was hilarious too. Mind you, I thought that whole trip was hilarious, the bits that I remember, anyway.

I do worry that if lots of people come here they might well be expecting something the spume of drivel cannot deliver, and they'll leave feeling let down that there was little here beyond highly articulate outbursts and references to soft toys. Not that anyone could possibly feel let down by Butter, I hope.

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On a related note, looking at the logs once again I note that Yahoo! thinks I am the fourth best source of information on toddler boy hairstyles. I am flattered that Yahoo! takes my style suggestions so seriously but I do wonder what the people doing those searches think when they arrive at the spume of drivel.

A final few snaps from Alsace. Firstly two snaps of the great Grand Cru vineyard Rangen, a vineyard that has been producing famous wines for over seven hundred years. The second picture shows St. Urban's chapel, from which one famous maker of Rangen draws the name for their sub-section of the vineyard. Cannot say I am an incredible fan of wines from either of Rangen's two most famous producers, but it is clearly a serious vineyard.

Finally we have a room in the gite that we hired for most of our stay. This room is not one of the bedrooms, but it is the kitschen:

The review of L'Arnsbourg mentioned below may be some time in coming; I am not feeling entirely at my most top bunny, alas. However, I feel it worth pointing out that when you have gone to the effort of learning the phrase "Je suis allergique de la farine de blé^*" to say to people who speak faultless English, L'Arnsbourg is the place to do this. Not much of the menu contained wheat flour anyway, but I was highly delighted to have, instead of a little tart for course six, a bowl of deeply lovely potato foam/soup with a sheet of fresh truffle shavings on top. It does slightly ruin things if one then goes on to have mind-binding, gut-meltingly strong cheese and a bloody great big cigar, but until those points in the meal I really was fuelled like fire. The first real course is certainly worthy of mention: a rectangular sheet of veal carpaccio with a dribble of truffled-honey and tiny cubes of apple and feta cheese on top all perfectly aligned on a rectangular plate. It slipped down a treat.

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^*Blé is a word that can be said with great relish and ostentation partly because blé makes me so violently ill, but mostly to irritate the locals with silly mis-pronunciations. I aimed for a long-a as in "Blaaay".

Whilst dining in Strasbourg I asked for the description of a dish named Männerstolz that I saw on a menu. Nice little restaurant, the waiter chappie spoke English slightly and was keen to flash his linguistic ability by saying it was a "Good sausage, big sausage, good sausage for men." My companion's knowledge of German suggested a translation might be "Men's pride". The regret? How can I have possibly failed to order an implement given such descriptions? I do not know, but I did. A bit of research today has yielded that these things can be upward of one metre in length. I'd be proud of such a sausage.

Let me try and dig my way out of my foolishness by suggesting that given such a hunk of meat I might be tempted to behave my at my wurst and run around beating other diners with it.

Right, a select few pictures from Alsace.

Firstly we must realise that even though a lot of Alsace was pounded to dust in the middle of last century, an awfully large amount of it is terribly pretty. Even if we ignore the majestic vineyards we have innumerable views like this:

Strasbourg also manages to have a spooky and foreboding cathedral

Obviously, a trip to a wine region will have a slight theme of drinking, so here I am lashing my way through a magnum of Trimbach CFE 1995. Trimbach make very acidic wines so you'll note the two bottles of Gaviscon in front of me.

Finally, at the three-star mentioned below I didn't feel it polite to spend the entire meal sucking my thumb like the other toddler present, so at the end I sucked on something else.

I have been away from the spume of drivel for a period of time on the grounds of being in France. Apart from extended separations from computers I simply find the French keyboards too irksome to manage serious typing. As soon as mobile phone providers start flogging these lovely little toys I will have less of an excuse, but I am sure I'll think of another by then.

News from France? Little of general interest. I did spend some time in my cellar:

Also some time in the cellars of wonderful winemakers, including the chap who was about to lose the bung in this barrel:

I attended the awfulness that is a toga party. Being a toddler I naturally wore a child's tunic and made sure I had a toy projectile weapon with me:

And finally I stopped by the local purveyors of meat:

Whilst in New York City I had the good fortune to visit Bemelmans Bar at the Carlyle Hotel. This suited me very much as it is themed on the twin delights of well-mixed, well-presented, neurone-frying cocktails and large, childish murals. It is one of the best bars I have visited. Even if it is not as intimate, quiet and sedate as Duke's, I certainly left in a refreshed and relaxed state of mind.

As I have pointed out in the past, unconventionally-named locations charm me very much. So after leaving the bar and going for a restorative stroll I was charmed, not to mention highly amused, by the name of the plaza I found I had arrived at:

Place names can suggest many things about the history and nature of an area. I suppose in some ways this was quite suggestive.

One of the interesting things about the US was the supply of different celebs. There are plenty rolling around London, but perhaps they are not quite so famous as those one ends up boozing next to in New York. I am not of the Avid Merrion persuasion but I was amused to have a few people pointed out to me whom I really should have recognised. Kevin Spacey sat next to us in one restaurant and was terribly charming, although he did not like a restaurant that I thought was great. He was spot-on about dining in London, though. Mel Brookes was staggering around in quite the silliest hat I have ever seen, and his voice is quite recognisable when shouting down a mobile telephone in order not to be drowned out by the ever-present traffic noise. Willem Dafoe was asked for an autograph in one dining establishment, possibly a touch intrusive. Far better, I thought, to keep giving him sidelong glances in order to work out from where one recognised him before it finally clicks, you bang the table and shout, "Ah, him!" Then get back to muttering about the service, they clearly had more well-heeled people to keep happy. Finally, I was not only impressed by Elliott Gould's choice of bar, but also by his steady gaze after drinking their heroic cocktails.

As I hope I have mentioned in the past, the USA can be really rather a lot of fun.

I realised I was being terribly idle not writing this up immediately so here we go with the report that matters from my trip: the food in chronological order.

New York City first round

Honmura An

Oyster and scallop sashimi
Beef tataki
Kobe pork
Various soba
De Montille Pommard Rugiens 2000
Quality: Good, but small portions and hardly thrilling

 

Rare Bar and Grill

Calamari fried in beer batter
Mexican cheeseburger
Chilli burger
Fries
Onion rings
Quality: Perfectly reasonable, staggeringly large portions

 

Cru

Duck meatballs
Mascarpone ice cream cones
Raw fluke with caviar
Raw langoustine with truffle
Burrata three ways
Grain fed veal "sous vide" with black-truffle anchovy mayonnaise 
JJ Prüm Wehlener Sonnenuhr Riesling Spätlese 1995
Ramonet Chassagne-Montrachet Ruchottes 2000
Mugnier Chambolle-Musigny les Amoureuses 1993
JJ Christoffel Ürziger Würzgarten Beerenauslese Auction 1975
Quality: Great wine list, wonderful service and well-priced. Quite brilliant

 

Kuruma Zushi

Neck and belly toro
Herring
Spanish and horse mackerel
Kampachi
Hamachi
Shima aji
Seabream
Sweet shrimp
Eel
Monkfish liver
Japanese tiny shrimp
Kuruma shrimp
Squid
Sea urchin
Several more grades of toro
Herring roe
Lots of sake
Quality: Amazingly good.

 

Nicky's Vietnamese Sandwiches

Pate sandwich
Chicken sandwich
Quality: Nice sandwiches for the price

 

DB Bistro Moderne

Chicken oyster salad with shrimp
Roast chicken salad
Twenty-nine dollar burger
Biale single-vineyard Zinfandel
Quality: Quite fun, quite cheap. I did like the burger and use of chicken oysters

 

WD-50

Pickled tongue with fried mayonnaise
Corned duck
Octopus
Monkfish and pear consommé
Flatiron fillet steak with caramelised onion tart
Pineapple, pine nut, pine needle
French toast with brown-butter ice-cream and bacon
Kreydenweiss Pinot Blanc 2002
Joguet Chinon Clos des Chenes 2002
Quality: Really very good indeed. Very inventive with a high level of skill in ingredient selection, menu composition and preparation. Certainly this was much better than Kevin Spacey told us the night before. Wine list was rubbish, alas.

 

On to Washington DC

Blacksalt

White anchovies
Malpeque oysters
Serrano-wrapped white shrimp with aji blanco
Braised octopus in tomato, garlic and olive oil
Maine diver scallops and duck ravioli
Rock shrimp risotto with asparagus, thyme and mascarpone
More Maine diver scallops with duck ravioli
Chateau Ste-Michelle Eroica 2003
Quality: Very good. Top class ingredients handled very well

 

Ben's Chili Bowl

Half-smoke chili dog
Chili burger
Cheese fries
Vanilla shake
Diet Coke
Quality: Well, I enjoyed it apart from the cheese fries that were more disgusting than I can articulate

 

Sushi Ko

Tuna sashimi
Toro sashimi
Rockfish sashimi
Ama ebi sashimi
Flounder sashimi
Yellowtail sashimi
Salmon sashimi
Crab with ikura sashimi
Uni sushi
Monkfish liver sushi
Flounder sushi
Seared white tuna sushi
Seared toro sushi
Eel in some form of sauce canapé
Tuna with spring onion canapé
Yellowfin with Japanese potato and garlic crisp canapé
Salmon canapé
Burgundy 'three ways'
Mugnier Musigny 1999
Quality: Stunning. Slightly less traditional than Kuruma, but really good nonetheless. Great Burgundy list

 

Corduroy

Filipino spring rolls
Warm goat's cheese with potato scrapings
Lobster roll
Flatiron steak
Creme brulée
Dönnhoff Oberhäuser Brücke Riesling Spätlese 2000
Cristom Marjorie Vineyard Pinot Noir 2001
Quality: A good, well-executed, interesting and affordable meal

 

New York City round two

Peter Luger

Shrimp cocktail
Porterhouse steak
Fries
Brooklyn lager
Quality: Good ingredients, cooked with a surprising lack of ability

 

Pearl Oyster Bar

Fried oysters
Fresh oysters
Lobster rolls
Hot fudge sundae
Sierra Nevada Pale Ale
Quality: Very good, lobster was top-hole and very affordable

 

Wallsé

Lobster ravioli
Spätzle supposedly with rabbit
Kavalierspitz with rösti
Wiener-schnitzel with cold, tasteless, deeply nauseating baby-food
Gobelsburg Heiligenstein Riesling 2003
Quality: Woeful, one of the worst meals it has been my displeasure not to have avoided eating. The service was laughably poor, but I did not laugh at the time, I shouted, in fact

 

Tomoe sushi

Baby spare ribs
Monkfish liver in ponzu sauce
Toro sushi
Yellowtail belly sushi
Squid sushi
Sweet shrimp sushi
Scallop sushi
Stimpson clam sushi
Smelt roe sushi
Sea eel sushi
Kirin Ichiban
Quality: Variable, from awful to reasonable

Rice to Riches

Traditional romance rice pudding
Coast to coast cheesecake rice pudding
Quality: Nice enough, but cold rice pudding? Hmmmm....

 

Gotham Bar and Grill

Scallop ceviche with avocado
Pasta with prosciutto, chorizo and baby clams
New York steak with onion rings and mustard custard
Martinelli Charles Ranch Chardonnay 2002
Celera Mills Vineyard Pinot Noir 2000
Quality: Very good, but not the most exciting of food

 

Grand Central Oyster Bar

Jumbo Shrimp Cocktail
Various fresh oysters
Smokehouse platter
Bay scallops in herb butter
Brooklyn lager
Sierra Nevada Pale Ale
Quality: Passable, but the service was piss-poor

 

Jewel Bako

Black sesame tofu
Toro tartare with oscietra
Monkfish liver
Two other appetisers
Rockfish
Green tea fried shrimp
Sashimi:
Three types of yellowtail
Toro
Sweet shrimp
Grunt fish
Live yellow clam
Another type of live clam
Akami tuna
Japanese snapper
Sushi:
Squid
Seared toro
Sea eel
Chopped mackerel with ginger
Akami tuna
Little white shrimp
Uni
Seared white fish
Baumard Trie Speciale 2000
Quality: Staggering good. Lawks!

 

Le Bernardin

Smoked salmon rillettes
Flash-marinated scallops with truffle and parmesan snow
Progressive tasting of marinated fluke ceviche
Lobster choucroute with pineapple and bacon
Boxler Riesling Sommerberg V 2000
Quality: I was pleased there was raw and barely-cooked fish on offer, and the prices were reasonable, but not up the the standard I had hoped

 

Pearl Oyster Bar (again)

Fried oysters
Oyster, clam, lobster and shrimp cocktail
Lobster roll
Sierra Nevada Pale Ale
Quality: Still good

 

Lombardi's

A vast pizza with sweet sausage, red onion and anchovies
Quality: Good enough and cheap

 

Weight gain in a little under two weeks:

Two and one half kilogrammes

Back in London with a gigabyte of largely awful pictures to sort through. For a brief taste, I have placed the purely childish ones here.

I really will try to provide a fuller description of the utter brilliance that is New York. I am pleased to be home, but I shall be returning to that city of purest fun.

Let us hold hands and dance around the lilac toadstool of love.

Well, back in expensive, dilapidated London. Reports of New York will follow when I am less utterly spent.

Back in New York, I feel charged with the buzz of a huge city already. This could be dure to getting little sleep as I am staying in the world's loudest hotel room.

May I suggest any baby/toddler visitors to New York do not rely on Depends as purchased from the ubiquitous Duane Reade pharmacies. Well, not rely on them if you want a dry bed.

Off to hit town!

My few days in Washington DC are coming to an end; it will be back to New York this afternoon. Much as Washington seems like a slightly sleepy place, and it is quite hard to get a decent drink, there are plenty of good things to see, do and eat here. The Eastern ceramics in the Freer collection are terribly good.

Well, I must away to breakfast then the Library of Congress. I hope to post more news before my departure on Saturday.

Greetings. I am having a terribly large amount of fun. There is wonderful food here and great cocktails. If you plan to have really good sushi I do suggest Kuruma Zushi, but do bring huge stacks of cash.

Yesterday was St Patrick's day; it appears there are a terribly large number of people here who claim some association with Ireland yet I did not hear an Irish accent all day. Ah well. I forgot it was a day associated with green-ness when I dressed in the morning so felt a touch nervous when I was staggering about wearing orange. If you are unfamiliar with why this is a fax pas then do have a look here.

No pictures as yet, alas, I am yet to find a join that will allow me to upload them. Right, to the bar!

My last day in Town for a couple of weeks, so I went to one of the most bonkers places in London in order to pick up my pitifully small pile of dollars: the City.

For those who do not know the City of London, or the Square Mile if you prefer, it is the financial district of London. The amount of money that has flowed through that area in the past several hundred years would make Croesus weep. This is not why I went there; I was there because it is a hilarious part of Town.

The plan of the area basically follows the street pattern from the middle-ages, so there are lots of narrow, twisty streets. Yet the buildings surrounding these streets reflect the enormous wealth that has been associated with the City, so there are large Gothic-Renaissance piles and huge concrete and glass behemoths towering on every side. It is quite a sight.

It only gets better at weekends and during evenings. Since there are only financial institutions and the shops that service their employees the entire area is dead after working hours. It is possible to walk for fifteen minutes on a weekend evening, in one of the richest parts of London, and not see a single person. It is very much like some post-apocalyptic vision.

There are also a terribly large number of bars, only open on weekdays, of course, but the real reason I love the city are the street names. An area that boasts such wonderful locations as 'Poultry' and 'Old Jewry' is surely worth investigating.

There are but a few days before I leave my little island for a considerably larger one. This means the next few days will feature furious washing, ironing of shirts, buying plug-adaptors and pain-killers, trying to fit two styles of attire and plenty of nappies into limited luggage space, buying more luggage, trying to find my passport, running around lifting up very small bits of paper in an increasingly desperate mood just in case my passport is hidden under them and much, much more.

As luck would have it, I am a toddler and so can often manage feats of boundless energy. Some people fancy a lie-in after a busy night of playing, I can get up at frightening times of morning in order to watch children's programs with the volume turned up to one hundred decibels. After washing sheets and hanging them on the line it may be that a nice sit-down and a cup of tea is in order, another alternative is to run up and down the washing-line, squealing with pleasure and beating the sheets with a stick that has been dipped in mud.

Butter, on the other hand, is a grown-up teddy bear. This is useful as it means he can look after me and keep me out of trouble. However, it does mean that at advanced hours of the evening he just feels a bit jaded, spent and generally in need of a bit of relaxation.

He does look rather dissolute.

I am visiting New York City next month, and as this is a staggeringly big city, I can only hope that Mr Jefferson's observation is correct.

I have been furiously booking fine dining establishments over the past couple of weeks, and I thoroughly expect to be staggering around watching my toes disappear over the course of two weeks. Whilst many Europeans feel the need to be sniffy about food in the US, there appear to be an awfully large number of fine establishments in New York City. I particularly look forward to trying some first-rate sushi, of which there is a positive dearth in London, alas.

There are two things yet to be arranged: Excellent drinking establishments and nappies. As far as the first is concerned, I have a large tome and the power of the internet which together I hope will not lead me astray. Or, rather, allow me to lead myself astray. With regards to the latter, should anyone know where I can purchase decent adult nappies in New York City do feel free to drop me an email.

I greatly look forward to my sojourn in a new city. I have prepared the very best in classically styled, contemporary English tailoring to aid the locals in spotting me; I am always happy to provide people with a good laugh.